|
aledawithwings
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Nikki
Birthday: 8/20/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: The exploration of Buffalonian life, poetry, love, autumn, holidays, my guitar, Stella Artois the Kitten, long baths in my awesome tub, tea, herbal remedies, and a faith bigger than me.
Occupation: nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  encounteryg
Member Since:
10/13/2004
|
|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| I have been thinking lately about how exhausted I've been feeling. Fall tends to bring this out in me as I had mono once in college- and didn't know it at the time, stubborn me!- but I think every little cold makes me that much more tired than the average bear. I'm also having a female problem. I'd very much appreciate your prayers.
But what I am finding, and what my husband pointed out, is that I am what he calls a "sprinter". I run in a crazy blitz for longer than most people probably should, and accomplish more than most people may, and faster. But what happens on the flipside is that I'm wiped.
My american upbringing has not spoken to me about "pace" in a healthy way.
So many people I know go 9-5, microwave dinner, and pop in front of a TV or computer.
Other people I know go to yoga at 6:30, then go 9-6, or 7, or 8 and then perhaps go home, feeling obligated to put a seasonal, whole foods, macrobiotic, home cooked meal on the table. Then, house work, then they sit down and do more work, perhaps even some of it volunteer. Until bed, way to late.
So that's the two of them. Guess where I fit in?
So now that I'm sick- which always happens- I'm examining.
What got me here? Is this my own doing, from too much doing? And where did I learn these habits?
Well, Type A people were of course children with parental and educational influences, but what stands out to me most is college.
College is an excercize in the sprint. One month, chill, two months running like crazy, one month chill, two months running like crazy. And if you were like me- meaning you sometimes worked two or even three jobs, those sprint times were hella crazy. Every semester I would have days where I missed class to do homework for the class. And I can pin point some type of emotional breakdown, literally every semester I had. But for some reason, this was considered normal.
One time, in school, a counselor asked, "Nikki, what refreshes you?" I realized living under the pace of my parents and home life that I was forced into some stages of refreshment but not being able to drive myself and being forced to eat dinner etc. Since then, I had literally given no thought to what I had lost leaving home, I just went to do what I had gone to school to do- learn how to change the world, and start changing it.
However, forced to answer the question, all I could come out with was reading fiction. It was something I totally denied myself in school, I think because it accomplished nothing. I also liked getting manicures- boys, do not laugh, it is very relaxing and many members of the mafia get manicures. But, I told her, I did not feel like I deserved these pleasures. Or that I could offer this priviledge to myself.
That issue was left untouched by her and by me for the remainder of college (so much else to handle!), but I left with it, and almost five years since my graduation, I am now forcing myself to read, to stay home, to not cook, to cry when I need to, to stay home. The idea of sharing my weakness and sickness with co-workers (who I want to believe I've convinced I am invincible, though this is unlikely) was astonishingly painful.
More painful now is trying to figure out what a healthy pace looks like. What it would take to have permission to leave things undone. How I can be healthy without always being able to spend an hour and a half cooking. How I can get things done without working every evening. How I can say no when it is required. If people will like me if I get less done.
For sure though, four or five month spurts of 60 hour weeks... it is killing me. And I'm only twenty six. Two weeks off sick where I still worked 30 hours each week... it is killing me.
The American disease of rugged individualism is leaving me like a piece of wood, sanded against the grain, for hours.
I'd love your input. | | |
| Some of you who were following me around this time last year may remember the feast of St Jude we had last year.
This year, we're at it again, you're all invited BTW :)
St. Jude, in Roman Catholicism, anyway, is recognized as the patron (advocate, friend) of lost causes.
I find that when his day arrives, every year, I have a new cause to offer up on this day. Last year it was my marriage, and our finances, and our general fears about Buffalo. This year, I find Jude's day with a health problem I never expected and a nonprofit job that is almost completely unfunded.
What lost causes are you remembering today? | | |
| I learned so much in my five years of higher education. So, so much that I am grateful for.
But for all of it I think so much was lacking that should be covered.
I am thinking of forming an alternative college where Gen Eds go over some of the most useful skills many humans (including myself) never quite master.
So instead of Intro to Philosophy there will be: How to Ask a Question; in place of General Psych there will be: The Art of Comfort; instead of English there will be, Finding Time to Read as a Grown Up; instead of lame PE electives, there will be Exploring the Joy of Moving Your Body, and instead of Fine Arts there will be Developing a True Cultural Art System.
In this way, perhaps, our western world would stop being so heady, and start being joyful, playful and fun.
| | |
| We're there.
That fatal moment that means one needs to decide to settle in, to be in one place, to put down roots.
We are pretty sure we are buying a house.
Granted, it is only 45k, and it is part of a ministry that seeks to plant Christians in neighborhoods at-risk, but it is still settling in, still laying down roots a little bit harder to leave than a year long lease. Soon, we will be the proud owners of a house... and it will have a backyard.
Furthermore, I also have what could be considered a grown up job. I manage a program for refugee women and, starting in March, will make what will be a fairly average wage for this part of the state. And I'll have benefits!
I guess something about all that brought me around to looking back at my old xanga posts from when Mark and I first met on here over three years ago (Dec 1st will be the 4th anniversary of his first comment to me). I was reading over my writing from seminary and what irked me then, what tickled me then, and my daily happenings are so different now that I can hardly even revisit them without mental effort. It's not that I don't like that "me". I do.
I thought more, I had more time to think outside of the "rat race" of daily living. I dialogued more, I philosophized more and vocalized it more using things like xanga. I shared my life more, especially with you all, and I examined it more. I celebrated more.
And the only thing I can think that squeezed it out of me was the entering of a "daily grind" with a full time job which was spurred on by pressing economic demands, spurred on in themselves by a college degree out of my price range, spurred on by two desires : 1- To change the world through ministry and 2- To be financially independent.
As for point one, what I currently do is probably world changing, and is colored by the learning of my degree, but is not directly correlated to my degree in any way. As for point two, I am now financially dependent in a worse way than to my parents. I'm dependent on my job, who is dependent on fickle grantors and foudnations.
Is it possible that adulthood will mean constantly seeking to undig a whole I dug believing it was in my best interest? The worlds best interest? Is it possible that I will trade all of my longing for knowledge, beauty, experience, etc, for survival.
I return to Maslow's heirarchy of needs. When I first heard of this triangled attempt to define human needs, I felt like it was self explanatory. It was a part of our missions training, we relearned it in urban ministry classes, we had it down pat. I really believed most americans were capable of achieving esteem and actualization, given the fact that most of us seem to have all we need.
Now I wonder if that is at all true. What if the access of debt and the increase of expense really does undermine our ability to meet our physiological needs? If not there, certainly it affects our feelings of safety- receiving bills we can't pay, threatening letters and calls every half hour... It's like harassment. It's an emotional battering.
What if this debt most americans accrue for one reason or another keeps us unsafe, and we can never reach actualization- which I imagine would involve a lot of creative thinking on bigger issues. Not being able to create, we instead consume, and become a part of a cycle that nearly enslaves us- or at least keeps us very still, and very quiet, in a very status quo way. (Perhaps this explains why student movements are so much more common than other kinds and why striking is the most unified employees ever seem)
What if the norm of adulthood is entrapment, a slavery, a brutal onslaught of 9-5 normative that kills the creative and the communal in favor of the consumptive capitalism we call American living.
Oh, friends.... how do we escape!?
| | |
| Gotta be honest, being ditched by all my xanga friends has made it easier to forget this page exists.
I have a real post that has been brewing for a long time. However, I currently lack the time or dedication.
Next week. Hang tight. | | |
|
